CDPR Defends Difficulty

Originally Posted by JDR13
Are you sure? That would be pretty high for any system to reach. What are your specs?

Are we talking about the same program, Morrowind Graphics Overhaul, or were you using the Morrowind Graphics Extender?

I'm pretty sure it was the overhaul - or a similar collection of a TON of the "best" visual mods. It was mentioned here on the Watch a few months back.

My specs: Core i7 930 - ATI 5870 - 6GB ram

Well, I can't be absolutely certain - but I know I had a smooth framerate and I was happy with performance. I did have to disable 1-2 things that I didn't care too much about, but I really can't remember what they were.

Originally Posted by JDR13
This is really quite odd. I turned the view distance down to 4 cells, turned off all shaders, and turned off all relections and water effects, and I was still only getting around 20fps. I'm starting to think this program just doesn't like my system.

I wonder if this is a Windows 7 64 issue. I probably should have installed it on my WinXP partition. I'm tempted to do that so I can see the difference, but I really don't want to go through that install process again.

JDR13, I have an i5, not even an i7, and Morrowind was running pretty nicely for me while using the extended graphics extender - MGE XE (on top of the MGE) installed into Win 7 64 bit. There is a certain very specific optimal setting between the fog multiplier factor and the distant objects setting..- I can't remember the values off the top of my my head - will check it for you to try if you're interested.

But why don't you try the MGE XE anyway? I won't say it doesn't tax my system to it's fullest - it does, but I don't seem to have a significant FPS hit, and my Morrowind is looking exquisite. (With Vurt's 2nd series of foliage/grass/trees replacers, and of course the obligatory heads and bodies mods, plus a few other texture and object overhauls .)

Yes, why don't we get a TES forum - I was going to barble on about Witcher 1 and Witcher 2 but got distracted with this Morrowind talk now - don't know why Morrowind is even being compared to; - the Witcher games aren't even sandbox games…

Oh, PS. I almost forgot - earlier in the thread Deep-O mentioned a bunch of seperate wildlife mods - these are all pulled together in a mod called "The Wild", except, I think for the Water Life mod, which is actually almost a nicer mod. Well, some of the "Wild" creatures don't really fit into the world too well, I found, whereas the creatures in the waterlife mod fits into the world seamlessly.

Originally Posted by JDR13
I've never heard of MGE XE. What's the difference?

It's an upgrade/extension for the MGE, that makes it even more powerful.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58YIZagWV8U
(Hmm, though to be quite honest, I think that my NPC, texture, foliage and light mods that I chose to install, look nicer than the guy's who did this video -just saying. )

We should have a moderator move this to its own thread.

Well, if you're going to ask, won't you point out, you know… that with the upcoming Skyrim, a TES subforum might be nice. Heck, even a Bethsoft subforum that includes the latest Fallouts might be nice, though I suppose it's a bit late for the latter.

I played through most of act one yesterday, and I have to agree now that the difficulty is problematic - I spent hours beating the Kayran, and with Letho I eventually gave up and switched to easy. Mind you I had no problems anywhere in the Prologue, that took more than 4,5 retries, using different tactics. But these boss fights are too much for me. In the Letho fight I also, for the first time noted that slugishness in the controls that many people complained about - I guess because he is quite fast and I had little room to maneuver.

@RivianWitch- Not sure if I trust MGE XE. It's being described as an "unstable build" right now. I'd love to get my hands on that real-time shadow casting though. I wonder if that's available separately.

@GhanBuriGhan- Since you waited this long to play TW2, you should probably wait for the 1.3 patch that is due any day now. The list of fixes and tweaks is huge. *Edit* Duh…I just realized it was released a few days ago.

Originally Posted by JDR13
@RivianWitch- Not sure if I trust MGE XE. It's being described as an "unstable build" right now. I'd love to get my hands on that real-time shadow casting though. I wonder if that's available separately.

@GhanBuriGhan- Since you waited this long to play TW2, you should probably wait for the 1.3 patch that is due any day now. The list of fixes and tweaks is huge. *Edit* Duh…I just realized it was released a few days ago.

I didn't wait - I'm just slow and yes, I am playing with 1.3 right now.

There are vids on youtube that show how to defeat the Kayran in a minute or two. After I'd watched one of those, I defeated it easily. (Admittedly, I tried unsuccessfully about 5 or 6 times before resorting to Youtube.)

Come to think of it, Witcher One also had a hard boss or two - a "Witcher" trademark?

If you recall, the Kikimore Queen also had a trick to it - but there was a "long" way around that you could also defeat her - not to be recommended for the faint-hearted who don't have hours to spend, though…
Personally I still think the kikimore queen was worse than any of the bosses Witcher 2 could trow at me.

Ghanburighan, thanks for the reminder- dlding that patch as we speak, I also want a replay. ..and noted your "trap" tip. Can't wait to try out stacked traps!

JDR13, shall we just make our own Mwind thread? Myself and a friend have been using the MGE XE for a while now- there was just a certain tweak we had to make for it to run beautifully - no crashes at all. See you a bit later in a Mwind thread - if nobody else makes one, I'll just start one in a few hours time, maybe there's an existing one already, though?

Yes, Witcher 1 also had that insane fight with the beast (that spirit dog thing) at the end of chapter 1 - I almost quit Witcher 1 because of that. And they got a lot of flak for it too. Think they'd learn from that… Well they learned one thing - the Kayran cutscene is skippable, unlike the one in Witcher 1!
I think I figured out the Kikimore queen pretty fast - at least I don't remember having much difficulty with it. But in W2 first the Endrega queens, then the Kayran, then Letho… Oh well, I made it.

Combat roll-away…?

July 24th, 2011, 00:12

Speaking of difficulty (or bad design)…perhaps I have missed some trick, but it seems if you are every backed into a small space and surrounded by enemies you're toast. I'm sure the Witcher1 allowed you to leap/roll past any enemy. Which would be sensible given your superhuman athleticism. I'm fighting a bunch of harpies in a very narrow cave system, and I'm starting to get irritated - its almost impossible not to be backed into a small space. Can you get away? Is there something I have missed? I don't mind taking damage escaping but I think you should be able to dodge away - esp against creatures that are flying…grrrrrrr!

Edit: playing with patch 1.3 - I don't notice my controls as being any more responsive (mouse + keyboard).

As the game progressed, I found bombs and signs becoming less and less responsive, which was a great pain if you'd invested in those. I'd like to see if this latest patch has improved sign and bomb responsiveness, since that was a huge irritation for me.

In any case, in my first playthrough, this forced me to concentrate on swordsmanship, and I have found one advantage of being backed into a corner could be that only one enemy attacks at a time, and if you mash your fast and slow attacks (RMB, LMB, RMB, LMB) fast enough in succession, (but never blocking) you can often manage to "break" or interrupt that one enemy's attacks for him never to get a blow in (Of course this won't work if you're surrounded).

Luckily by the time I was fighting the Queen harpy, (Ioverth's path) I had so much health (partly upgraded and partly from using mutagens in my skill tree) and I had such good armor, and armor + weapon enhancements that those harpies up there weren't that much of a problem anymore.

EDIT: Btw, importing a Witcher 1 save with a superior sword and armor HUGELY skews the difficulty. It makes the game much, much easier at the start. Importing a game can have you start off with equipment that you'll only realistically be able to get well into act 2 of the game.

Perhaps this is why the start feels hard to some players - it is much harder if you start without importing a W1 save first.

After a few attempts, I beat the harpies quite easily - made liberal use of bombs and ensured that I managed to keep distance between myself and them. I still think, though, that Geralt should be able to tumble beneath them, given that they are flying creatures and attack from the air.

As for the Kayran….hm. I defeated it several times but didn't know what to do when it was badly wounded and flailing about. They could have put in more obvious clues …which I beleive they have done now?